Friday 30 May 2014 08.16 EDT
First published on Friday 30 May 2014 08.16 EDT

"My name is Nicola, I am 13 and I am so scared to have sex it makes me cry nearly every day."

So starts an entry to the Everyday Sexism Project from a schoolgirl who has seen videos of "sex" (she doesn't use the word porn) on her peers' mobile phones at school. She continues: "It looks so horrible and like it hurts … I feel like its unfair that girls have to have horrible things done to them but boys can just laugh and watch the videos and they don't realise how scary it is … the real life sex that we see is so scary and painful and the woman is crying and getting hurt." [sic]

Another girl's entry reads:

"Yesterday at school I was sat at a desk working, and didn't notice a male friend of mine take a picture of my breasts. The only reason I found out is because he snap-chatted the picture to various other guys from my school, having edited it so that my breasts were circled."

One entry comes from a girl who describes being sexually assaulted at school at the age of 12. She writes: "I can't type too much because I'm starting to cry, but suffice to say he put his hands in places that I did not want him to."

Another is written by a teacher and form tutor in a secondary school. It says:

"I witness on a daily basis the girls in my classes being called "whore" "bitch" "slag" "slut" as a matter of course, heckled if they dare to speak in class, their shirts being forcibly undone and their skirts being lifted and held by groups of boys, (I WANT TO EMPHASISE THAT THIS IS MORE OFTEN THAN NOT A DAILY EVENT, AND OFTEN BORDERS ON ASSAULT). On a daily basis I am forced to confiscate mobile phones as boys are watching hardcore pornography videos in lessons and I have noticed, sadly, that as time has gone on the girls in my classes have become more and more reserved and reluctant to draw attention to themselves."

From online porn to page 3, Facebook memes to Game of Thrones, young people in the UK are growing up facing a barrage of ideas and information about sex and gender, what it means to be a man or a woman, and how they will be judged and valued as adults. Data from a YouGov survey for the End Violence Against Women coalition found that 71% of 16-18-year-olds have heard sexual name calling to girls at school at least a few times a week. Among the same age group, almost one in three girls had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. According to a 2009 NSPCC report, one in three girls aged 13-17 reported sexual partner violence, a quarter reported physical partner violence and nearly three-quarters reported emotional partner violence.

This week, I'll travel to Kosovo to observe the work of the Young Men initiative, a project supported by the charity Care International. The idea behind the initiative is simple: by educating young men on issues such as gender equality, violence and sex, they become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. In the wake of its success so far, governments in Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo have added compulsory teaching of these issues to the curriculum Now, Care International is calling on governments around the world to follow suit. Ahead of June's global summit to end sexual violence in conflict, the charity has launched a petition asking the summit's co-chairs, William Hague and Angelina Jolie, to urge ministers from the 140 countries attending the summit to ensure these vital issues are covered in the classroom.

Alice Allan, head of advocacy at Care International UK, said: "We'll never end sexual violence – whether it's happening in war zones or behind closed doors here in the UK – without tackling the root causes. The attitudes that lead to abuse and sickening attacks on women and girls are ingrained in society, globally. Care's work has shown that working with men and boys really can break the cycle of violence. In parts of the Balkans, where teaching boys and young men about respect, consent and non-violence in relationships is already on the curriculum, 73% now say it is wrong to use violence against an unfaithful partner, compared with 48% before.

"This is just the start but it's clear that educating young men and boys to change male attitudes is a crucial step to ending violence against women in the next generation."

It's a call to arms to which the UK should be first to respond. This isn't to suggest that every boy is part of the problem. Indeed, many men will experience violence and assault themselves. Rather, it's about the radical idea that men and boys have the opportunity to be part of the change, within a society that needs to see a dramatic cultural shift in the very idea of what it means to be a man.

Again and again, when incidents of sexual violence are reported, society blames the victim. We hear countless calls to warn girls: don't wear a short skirt, don't go out late at night, don't walk alone, and yet the rapes and assaults continue. Because contrary to popular belief, it isn't the victims that cause them at all. It's time we started educating boys.